AMERICA'S JAILS ARE JAMMED

Hardly anyone could have missed the great prison-building boom a few years
back. All told, during the first half of the 1990s, states spent nearly $15
billion and added some 400,000 beds to alleviate overcrowding.

That increase in capacity, coupled with a significant slowdown in the prison
population growth rate since 1994, has brought the construction craze to an
end. So it may come as something of a surprise to learn that across the
nation, thousands of inmates still are lacking beds, basic medical
assistance and sufficient oversight.

For the most part, however, these are not prisons problems. They are jail
problems.

"We have people on the floor here routinely," says Mark Schlect, jail
administrator in Kenosha County, Wis., "and we have for many years now."

The jail population nationwide is at an all-time high, despite downturns in
most crime rates. A recent survey of jails by the U.S. Justice Department
shows that the number of jail inmates increased by 9.4 percent between
mid-1996 and mid-1997, the largest jump this decade. And for the first time
since 1990, jail capacity, measured by the total number of beds, did not
keep pace with the rising number of inmates.

Still, the public seems largely uninterested in taking steps to remedy the
situation. Money to build more jail cells would have to come directly from
local taxpayers, whereas prison costs can be spread out over an entire
state. Another factor is that the danger posed by those in the local lockup
is perceived to be significantly less than that of prison inmates. (Prisons
generally confine people serving time for felonies; jails generally confine
people serving time for less-severe crimes.)

These days, though, county jails hold many different types of offenders:
those awaiting arraignment or trial; temporary detainees, such as juveniles
or those in need of medical attention; convicted offenders sentenced to less
than a year; those awaiting the final paperwork before being transferred to
state or federal prison; and those who should be in prison but are not
because of overcrowding.

In addition, according to Ken Kerle of the American Jail Association, jails
hold more of the mentally disturbed than psychiatric hospitals. All
together, jails process more than 26 million people each year, and the exact
population of individual facilities changes by the hour.

Clearly, it is difficult to characterize typical jail inhabitants -- with
one major exception: Experts estimate that more than 70 percent are drug
users.

Mandatory minimum sentences for drug dealers and users, along with three-or
even two-strike laws in many states, have resulted in a clogged criminal
justice system, and therefore, more time in holding pens for those facing
charges. "Jail crowding is a result, largely, of the sentencing decisions
we've chosen as a society," says Jennie Gainsborough of the American Civil
Liberties Union's National Prison Project.

But harsher sentencing policies and the increased scope of drug laws don't
carry corresponding spending directed toward jails. And while overcrowding
at the state level can be a source of problems at the county level: When a
state prison cannot accept a convicted felon, the jail holds him or her
until it can.

In 1993, 11 percent of the jail population nationwide should have been in
state prisons. Although that figure has now dropped to 6 percent, most of
the decrease is attributable to a single state -- Texas.

Some say that there is an "if you build it, they will come" phenomenon
associated with jails. Once there is room, judges will send convicts or
those awaiting trial to the open facilities.

Alternatives to incarceration being tried in various places include
electronic monitoring and other types of pre-trial supervision; work-release
and community service initiatives; and substance-abuse programs. Drug and
alcohol rehabilitation facilities are an expensive option, however, and one
that judges have been reluctant to use, lest they be viewed as being soft on
crime.

Copyright © 1998 Scripps Howard